Female Protagonist

I was the most envied courtesan in all the capital.

Simply because I bore a seventy-percent resemblance to the Crown Princess, someone threw down a fortune and bought me on the very night I was first listed.

Hugging that heavy pile of silver, I sat in a small sedan chair, both thrilled and anxious.

I secretly made up my mind: even if my patron turned out to be some nasty sixty-year-old geezer, I would still gaze at him with tender affection and kiss him anyway.

As long as I could get my contract of sale and take hold of my own freedom, I could do anything!

But when I saw the prisoner in the cell, soaked with urine and raving like a madman…

I turned around and wanted to leave.

Sorry. I had still overestimated myself!

Chapter 0

After my father beat me to death in a drunken rage, I was reborn as my grandmother’s best friend-an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Grandma asked anxiously, “Xiao Fang, is the baby healthy?”

I said, “It’s brain-damaged. I recommend aborting it.”

[A Long-Planned Scheme + Forceful Possession + A Powerful Man Bows His Head for Love + Both Leads Chaste + Two Strong Leads Join Forces]

Pei Xianjing, the eldest legitimate son of the Duke’s household, enjoyed the Emperor’s deep favor. Accomplished in both civil and military affairs, fair-minded and incorruptible, he was hailed by all as an upright gentleman and a capable minister who could save the realm-an aloof, unattainable flower blooming upon a frozen peak.

A savior delivered all beneath heaven.

And so, when Xing Shuwei came to him four years ago with nowhere else to turn, he had shown her generous compassion and allowed her to stay. “From now on, you belong to me.”

Overwhelmed with gratitude, Xing Shuwei regarded him as the lifeline that had saved both her and her younger brother. She obeyed his every word.

Then, on the day after her eighteenth birthday, Pei Xianjing pinned her against his desk.

The courteous gentleman had become a ravenous wolf. “Weiwei, do you like the birthday gift I gave you?”

“You are the rose I planted with my own hands. Even if every inch of you is covered in thorns, I am the only one you may prick.”

I was beaten and driven out of the Chancellor’s Mansion with clubs.

As I lay dying of illness in the pouring rain, a scholar picked me up and took me home.

He didn’t mind my filth, nor did he mind my stupidity.

He cared for me in silence, acting even more like a mute than I did.

Once my injuries had healed, I prepared to bid the scholar farewell.

He went out to buy supplies for my journey, but he did not return that night. When I finally found him, I discovered that someone had broken both his legs and left him on the street to die.

He saw me and looked dazed for a moment, his face tinged with regret.

“Zhizhi, why haven’t you left? You should have gone.”

I wanted to ask myself that too-why hadn’t I left? Perhaps it was the few scraps of conscience I had left that made me unable to walk away, unable to avoid the trouble.

I dragged him home and nursed him with care. Before long, he recovered.

Neither of us ever mentioned my departure again. Later, his name appeared on the golden roster.

He was named the Top Graduate during the palace examinations, and he was on the verge of achieving fame and fortune.

Yet, he knelt and pleaded with His Majesty to thoroughly reinvestigate the case of the deposed Crown Prince from years ago.

His Majesty was furious. He threw him into the Imperial Prison and ordered his exile to the frontier.

I had no money and couldn’t get into the Imperial Prison.

I could only wait at the city gates, hoping to run into him and ask what on earth had happened.

But I waited through several dawns and dusks, and he never came.

Later still, I entered the palace as a study companion for the Fifth Princess.

Only then did I learn that a scholar in the Imperial Prison that year had died to prove his resolve, smashing his head against the blood-stained walls of the cell. Naturally, there were no guards to escort a prisoner out through the city gates.

But the Song Duhe I knew was never a reckless man, and he certainly wasn’t one to choose death so easily.

Born into a family of household servants, Zhou Fanxing is chosen as a maid for a noble girl and discovers a gift for mathematics and astronomy that no woman of her station is meant to possess.

While her beautiful younger sister Mingyue climbs into the imperial harem and their mistress struggles with betrayal, Fanxing works in secret, knowing her discoveries can never bear her name.

Released from the palace into an ordinary merchant marriage, she keeps calculating the heavens as illness shortens her life.

At last, beneath a meteor shower she predicted decades in advance, the nameless servant finds the answer she has spent her life pursuing.

Three women—and the husband who loved her quietly—reveal what the stars meant to a genius the world refused to see.

Before I even married my husband, I already owed his family a life.

His elder brother had died in an accident while working away from home to save up for my husband’s wedding.

On our wedding night, my husband dragged me to his brother’s grave and forced me to kowtow.

“If it weren’t for you, my brother wouldn’t be dead.”

“You’ll spend the rest of your life paying for it.”

After that, I worked in the fields all day and waited on his entire family at night.

Whenever he drank, he beat me.

I fled to my mother’s house.

She held me and cried all night.

The next morning, she pushed me toward the door.

“Go back.”

“Your sister-in-law doesn’t want you staying here.

There’s nothing I can do.”

“Just bear it.

Once he’s old and too weak to hit you, your life will be over anyway.”

But I didn’t want to bear it anymore.

After the college entrance exams ended, students leaving the test site were interviewed and asked how they felt in that moment.

A handsome boy with eyes like stars and moonlight looked into the camera and said calmly, “I only hope to realize my dreams.”

A moment later, he added in a low voice, “And meet the rainbow in my heart.”

The camera cut to a girl with dimples and a smile as bright as a blooming flower. A rainbow hair clip pinned in her hair caught the light in tiny, glittering sparks.

She stuck out her tongue playfully. “Oh no, I think I might not get into Q University! If I end up having to repeat the year, Pei Zhiyu, you have to wait for me!”

Pei Zhiyu was the person I liked.

But I was not that beautiful girl.

When that interview aired, I was hiding at home, sobbing my heart out because I had bombed the college entrance exams.

It looked like my life and my first love were both about to be completely over.

I was the poor scholarship student at an elite private high school. That day, I suddenly started seeing floating comments:

[The male lead is cutting class and climbing over the wall from the school’s back garden, but he fell into the water! What do we do? The male lead can’t swim!]

[Where’s the female lead? Save him!]

[The female lead is sick today, so she’s not at school. Sigh, what a shame. Whoever saves the male lead will gain a ton of favorability with him.]

I wasn’t the female lead of this story. I was just cannon fodder.

At that moment, I lazily propped my chin in my hand and continued listening to math class.

Please. What good would the male lead’s favorability do me? I wasn’t going to save him.

He was the male lead, anyway. It wasn’t like he’d actually drown.

I wasn’t some kind, innocent little flower. I only cared about two things: money and grades.

The floating comments kept rolling by:

[Whoever saves the male lead will probably get a huge reward from his family, right? I wonder who’ll be that lucky. With how rich his family is, even a little pocket change from them would be enough to live on for a lifetime.]

Money!?

I shot to my feet. Behind me, my chair toppled over with a loud clang.

Chapter 0

The year I turned thirty-two, I kept a poor college boy.

One day, passing by the university, I saw Shi Jin with a girl caged in his arms.

His eyes were red, wronged yet restrained. “Please don’t think I’m dirty…”

It was a perfectly straightforward sugar arrangement.

So why did he make it sound as if I had defiled him?

If he thought it was dirty, plenty of people wouldn’t.

I exhaled a stream of smoke, turned to the blond college boy passing by in head-to-toe fakes, and said,

“Ask him whether he’s willing to call someone mommy.”

When I was eleven, my stepmother pushed me into a river, and after being passed from hand to hand, I ended up in the pleasure quarter.

Five years later, on an ordinary morning, I painted my brows, opened her door with a smile, and said, “I’m back. I missed you.”

Not long afterward, my stepmother’s body was found in an old well.